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A multi-anvil high pressure experiment is like an onion. So. Many. Layers. #thread
This is a photo of the fully assembled experiment sitting inside the press.
Click on this thread to see all the layers!
This is a photo of the fully assembled experiment sitting inside the press.
Click on this thread to see all the layers!
This is the Multi-anvil press ready to go. The experiment sits deep inside the cylinder in the center, with what look like door knobs on it, which we call the “hat box”.
Inside of the hat box is the cube assembly, as seen in the first photo. Here is the cube assembly fully built. The copper piece is an electrode used to heat the sample. The wires are used to measure the sample temperature. All of the components are assembled by hand for each run.
The cubes are made of tungsten carbide - a very hard material. Each cube is like an anvil, which squeezes on the sample assembly (the white octahedron in the center of the cubes).
The octahedron is perhaps the most complicated bit. It’s made of ceramic and houses a whole slew of components, including a rhenium furnace, other ceramic spacers, and of course the sample itself.
Finally, wrapped way deep inside all of this, is the sample! A graphite capsule holds rock powder packed into it. A graphite lid gets placed on top. That is the top of a pen on the right for scale.
We do all this to create immense pressures to simulate the deep interiors and even cores of planets. By making planets in the lab, we can ask Q’s like: How do planets form? Where/how are different elements stored inside planets? Can planetary interiors drive life on the surface?
This is just a piece of what we do in the #ExperimentalPetrology lab at @NASA_Johnson in @Astromaterials research, NASA’s home for geological exploration of the universe!
